Baby Laughing Buddha Statue

The belly is not a joke about eating.

It is half of a couplet that hangs over the Maitreya hall in most Chinese temples. 大肚能容, the big belly can hold what the world finds hard to hold. The other half is about the face: 開口便笑, the open mouth laughs at what the world finds laughable. That is the whole of Budai, and it is why he turns up in shops, cars and living rooms rather than only in temples.

These are the cute baby version. Same laugh, same belly, same long ears, but a toddler, robe slipping off his shoulders and bare feet underneath. Four poses, and the robe colour tells you which is which:

• Standing, blue robe, holding it open
• Sitting, coral robe, both arms flung up
• Laying, purple robe, propped on one elbow
• Thinking, green robe, hand beside his cheek

All four are the same unglazed purple clay, so the skin is matte and faintly sandy, and the colour is the material rather than paint sitting on top of it. Rubbing the belly for luck is a real custom rather than a tourist invention, and the belly on all four is left bare and smooth.

He goes almost anywhere. On an altar next to the more serious figures, on a desk where you will see him during the working day, on a bookshelf, a windowsill, a car dashboard, or set into a plant pot. He is small and he is not solemn, so he does not need a formal setting to look right.

He also works as a tea pet, which is the one use worth explaining. The Chinese for keeping one is 養, to raise: you pour the rinse water and the last of the pot over him while you drink, session after session, and unglazed clay slowly takes up a sheen from the tea. It takes months. One raised for a year looks nothing like one out of the box, and the difference is down entirely to whoever owned it. Completely optional. He looks right dry.

For anyone who wants a Buddha that is not solemn. Small enough to sit in a cupped palm.